Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge was developed by Acclaim/LJN first for the Super Nintendo in 1992 and then ported to the Game Gear, Sega Genesis and Game Boy. You play the role of Spider-Man as he rescues various members of the X-Men from the evil mastermind Arcade. You must rescue Storm, Cyclops, Wolverine and Gambit. After completing each character's level to rescue them, you then play a mini-level with the character you just rescued.
The Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis versions of the games are nearly identical. While it is a pretty average games, it is worth playing if you are a Spider-Man or X-Men fan. The portable versions (Game Boy and Game Gear) are not nearly as good though. Control issues make them harder than they should be so they are more an exercise in frustration.
While this isn't necessarily the best Marvel based game, it can still be enjoyable for fans. This game has never been re-released as far as I know so you'll want to track down the SNES or Genesis version. You can go the emulation route of course but original cartridges are pretty cheap and easy to find.
For some reason this ad features the Super Nintendo and Genesis version of the game but a completely separate Spider-Man game for the Game Boy. I can only guess that the Game Gear and Game Boy versions were not ready at the time of this ad.
I played this game more recently on a ROM, and my god is it hard. It's fun, and oh so rewarding when you beat a level, but GOD DAMN it's as frustrating as can be at points.
I think the portable versions were even harder...
Oh no. That sounds like the lost 8th circle of hell. I'll be sure to steer damn clear of those. lol Thanks for the warning.
This is likely a followup to the DOS/C64 Madness on Murderworld, a game that caused me no end of frustration when I got it for my Commodore years ago.
I couldn't find a link between the two games and they are really different kind of games by different companies (as far as I could tell) but it does seem pretty coincidental that both involve Arcade...
Ah, okay, I'd wondered. Odd they'd both include him, he's always been sort of an incidental player in the comics AFAIK.
It looks like there was a sequel to Madness on Murderworld released the following year called X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants. That one was DOS only and seems to have had nothing to do with Arcade :).